Quince a surpise

| Green Card Gardener

When I was biking to the post office this afternoon, our neighbor yelled over „Hey, I have quinces. Do you want some?“ Did I want some?!?

Last fall I asked every local farmer and vendor at farm markets for quinces, to no avail. Then, at the end of October, our neighbor spotted a couple of abandoned quince trees at the place where he presses his apples for cider. So one evening he knocked on our door with a big basket of quinces. They were already way past their prime but I was happy nonetheless. I divided the quinces into small batches to use them for as many different recipes as I could. The quince compote was yummy, other things were not so good yet the overall quince experience and taste made me want to try out more recipes with this ugly duckling of the fruit world.

Ugly duckling… maybe not. The quinces I lugged home today are big, plump and beautiful.

Now I have all weekend to think about what I am going to do with them.

Confessions of a raspberry hoarder

| Green Card Gardener

When it comes to raspberries, I turn into a combination of a hoarder and the food police – at least when the harvest is scarce in mid-summer. It ticks me off when someone pops a handful of freshly picked raspberries in their mouth after I have spent so much time picking (needless to say, I am particular about letting someone else pick the raspberries in my garden).

I admit that sometimes, I even leave the raspberries in the garage and wait until I’m alone in the kitchen so I can spread them on a baking sheet and freeze them.  I keep hoarding until I have a couple of 1-gallon bags in the freezer to make cakes, pies and desserts when the children are home so everyone gets their equal share of raspberries. The addictive Raspberry Almond Vacherin from Amanda Hesser’s Cooking for Mr. Latte is everybody’s declared favorite.

Now that I have reached my raspberry target for 2010 and I am still harvesting raspberries, I can finally relax! I used half of the two pints I picked today to make a custard pie just for my husband and me to splurge on.

One remark about shortening: Until I discovered the organic Jungle brand, shortening was a big no-no for me.  This is the only shortening I will use. It is non-hydrogenated and makes a great flaky pie crust.

Raspberry Pie with Crème Anglaise

Pie crust:

1 cup flour

1 tablespoon sugar

¼ teaspoon salt

1/3  cup (about 2½ ounces) shortening, at room temperature

¼ cup ice water

Crème anglaise:

¼ cup sugar

2 egg yolks

¾ cup + 2 tablespoons low-fat or whole milk

1½ teaspoons cornstarch

1½ teaspoons vanilla extract

Filling:

1 pint fresh raspberries

You also need:

A pastry blender

Wax paper

A 9-inch pie pan with removable rim

1. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F.

2. For the pie crust, mix flour, salt and shortening with a pastry blender until crumbly. Add water by tablespoons until the dough holds together in a ball. Blend briefly to get rid of any lumps.

3. Roll out the dough to an 11-inch circle between two sheets of wax paper. Remove the top layer of the wax paper and flip the wax paper over to fit the circle into a 9-inch fluted pie pan with removable rim. Carefully remove the wax paper. You might have do this by ripping off strips of paper in order to leave the dough intact (sorry, no recycling). Let the dough come up to the height of the rim. Trim the dough along the rim with a sharp knife.

4. Loosely line the crust with lightly greased aluminum foil (shiny side down) and fill with pie weights. Bake in the preheated oven for 10 minutes. Reduce the temperature to 350 degrees Fahrenheit, remove the pie weights and the aluminum foil and bake for 10 to 13 more minutes, or until the crust has a golden brown color. Let cool on a wire rack.

5. For the crème anglaise, beat the sugar and the egg yolks with an electric mixer until thick and pale yellow. Cook with ¾ cup milk in a small heavy saucepan over very low heat for 5 minutes, whisking constantly. Dissolve the cornstarch in 2 tablespoons milk and whisk into the mixture. Cook a few more minutes until it thickens. Make sure it doesn’t boil or the eggs will curdle.

6. Remove from the heat and add the vanilla extract. Let cool to room temperature, whisking a few times to prevent a skin from forming.

7. Whisk the crème anglaise, then spread it evenly on the cooled pie crust. If it is lumpy, strain through a sieve before spreading.

8. Set the raspberries into the custard and refrigerate until the custard has completely set and the pie is chilled, about 1 to 2 hours.

Tomato resort

| Green Card Gardener

“You know,“ I said to my husband when he helped me fill tomato soup into freezer bags at 11 o’clock at night, and my eyes fell on a basket of cherry tomatoes, “I am getting a little sick of all this processing.” “You say this every year,” he responded, “and I give you the same answer every year.”

When I started planning a garden, the first book I bought was The Food Lover’s Garden by Angelo M. Pellegrini. M.F.K. Fisher called it a classic when it was published 40 years ago so I thought it had to be good. Indeed, the book is packed with excellent, no-nonsense garden advice about growing organic vegetables.

I remember that when I first read The Food Lover’s Garden, I smiled about sentences like the one that wraps up the chapter on tomatoes: “When your first tomato is ripe (…) pop it, a quarter at a time, into your mouth. I shall be listening for your sighs of sweet contentment!”

I also remember sighing over the fact that the author, located in the Pacific Northwest, could grow vegetables year round and I couldn’t. Six years later, I admit that I am grateful for the break that the Pennsylvania winter forces me to take between November and March. Which, of course, doesn’t mean that I don’t get antsy by mid-January, making planting lists and crop-rotation blueprints when the first seed catalogs arrive in the mail.

So back to tomatoes… Cherry tomatoes are plentiful this year and I needed to find a way of turning them into something that a) did not require buying additional ingredients, b) was quick and easy to make, and c) keeps for several days or longer. So I cooked up this tomato spread. It tastes good with crackers or wholesome fresh bread, or as part of a sandwich.

This recipe was a selected as a Food52 Community Pick.

Cherry Tomato Spread

1¾ pounds ripe cherry tomatoes

6 garlic cloves

¼ cup olive oil

1 teaspoon salt

Freshly ground pepper

1 pinch cayenne pepper

You also need:

A small cast-iron Dutch oven

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.

2. Coarsely chop tomatoes in half, saving all of the the juice. Chop garlic. In a bowl mix tomatoes and juice, garlic, olive oil, pepper and cayenne pepper.

3. Put mixture in a small cast-iron pot and cook covered in the preheated oven for 1 hour.

4. Remove the lid and cook for 1 more hour, or until the juice has thickened. Stir occasionally and scrape down the tomatoes from the edges to prevent burning.

5. Cool and transfer to a tall bowl if using a stick blender for pureeing, or a food processor bowl. Puree finely. Fill in an airtight container, pour a little bit of olive oil on top to seal, and refrigerate.

Makes about 2 cups

Finally here but not for long

| Green Card Gardener

Within a few days, the Charentais French breakfast melons that I started indoors in the spring have become super ripe. They are so juicy that I have to cut them over a bowl. It was worth the long wait and effort, which included turning part of my office into a greenhouse.

The melons are fairly small so just eating the daily harvest of two to three melons is tempting and easy to do. But I love to capture the wonderful flavor and bright color for grey winter days so I use the ripest melons, even the ones that are a tad overripe, to make sorbet.

There is not much to this recipe other than using only very ripe melons and chilling all the ingredients very well before processing. If you have an ice-cream maker with an open freezing bowl, try to find the coolest spot in your house, even if it’s the hallway or the bathroom, because in a warm or hot environment the end result will be rather crystalline and less smooth.

Cantaloupe Sorbet with Lemon Balm

4 ounces water

5 ounces sugar

14 ounces pulp from very ripe fresh cantaloupe

6 sprigs fresh untreated lemon balm

1/3 cup fresh lime juice

1. Bring water and sugar to a boil in a small saucepan. Stir until the sugar is completely dissolved, scraping down the sides as it boils. Remove syrup from the heat and let cool. Put in an airtight container and refrigerate for 24 hours.

2. Puree the pulp to a smooth consistency. Mix with the lime juice.

3. Strip the leaves off the lemon balm and chop them finely. Mix with the pulp. Refrigerate for 24 hours.

4. Strain the pulp through a fine sieve. Use a silicone spatula to squeeze out as much liquid as possible.

5. Measure 8 ounces of syrup and 12 ounces of melon liquid. Mix well. Process in an ice-cream maker according to manufacturer’s instructions.

6. Fill sorbet in airtight freezer containers and freeze for 12 hours, or until solidly frozen.  Take sorbet out of the freezer 15 to 20 minutes before serving to soften, but not much longer because it melts quickly.

Makes 6 servings